Moving on

Cherryfudge

Sun_Addict said:

By coincidence my uncle was also in Egypt during the war.

Ooh, do you know any more? I think Dad was near Cairo but when demobbed, he had a short stint at the University of Alexandria. His job was ammunition disposal... there's currently an elderly gentleman at our church who did the follow-up job to him, probably in the 1950s - clearing up what the army left behind. Dad travelled when he could: I know he spent at least one leave in then Palestine, which involved him wandering into a camp where he definitely shouldn't have been, and bluffing his way out by saluting the guard and saying 'Good evening' in Arabic as though he was perfectly entitled to be in what was effectively an enemy camp. How he got in, I've no idea, but I don't think much of their surveillance, however pleased I am that it was ineffective.  

Cherryfudge

Honeysucklelou2 said:

Interesting thoughts about languages. My DD4 loves doing Spanish A level but is teaching herself Korean alongside. She uses Duolingo but also watches films in Korean to try and improve her pronunciation and understanding. I struggle to keep up with 1 extra language!

According to Duolingo, Korean is very popular. It takes all my focus to do anything with a language that's related to English, so I take my hat off to her! What's your extra language, may I ask? Is it something you learned at school, or grew up with, or learned more recently?

Quite a few people I know are studying Romanian as our church has links with Romania, but I don't know any.  It took me long enough to pass as Yorkshire to an outsider. True Yorkshire people probably spot me as a fake straight away, they're just too polite to say so!  

Cherryfudge

Today... still mild but very grey. DH got his walk in before it rained: I spent ages catching up on work emails, most of which were nothing relevant to me. I have, however, added the past week's shifts to my timesheet and discovered that the other job owes me two and three quarter hours annual leave.

We went and did our big shop later. My maximum is generally a bit over £20 so £60 felt heavy even with the car to carry it in. It's mostly store cupboard stuff using the Mr T double points offer with an extra 50 points for a £2 spend on citrus fruits. I haven't sorted out whether the general doubling of points is then doubled again with the voucher, or are they only doubled once? Anyway, just under £3 worth of points, which is nice.

Lunch was fish and chips from the supermarket instead of the chippy, and tea was a massive sandwich of chicken, stuffing and redcurrant jelly.

I've also tried to pay for the coming year's garden waste collection: our bin is already full. That should be £42 as they've changed system so our area pays a little less than neighbouring ones because we've already paid till April. However, the website may or may not have taken my payment: possibly not as the confirmation page had an error message. I'll check my credit card details later.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping £5.45
Toiletries £53.73
Garden £42 (if the payment went through).

DH has also bought groceries but I don't know what.

ETA
Household £6 (window cleaner).

milann

I’d had half an idea of learning through Duolingo during lockdown. When I worked at school I supported some of the children who needed extra help and they were learning Spanish. I knew VERY little….in fact I knew no Spanish at all. I made an ok start. Then when I had to finish work there didn’t seem much point so I transferred over to French as I’d learnt French to O Level. I’d surprisingly remembered more than I expected, but since we haven’t been abroad for years I lost interest as once again there didn’t seem much point.

Cherryfudge

It's interesting you managed to help them despite not knowing much yourself, @milann! I helped my daughter keep up her German for a year, but I'd never been taught it myself. Now I'm trying to help someone with Maths that I can't fully get my head round.  

I think I'm enjoying the language learning as a challenge rather than aiming to use French abroad, but the last couple of days I've been going over some of the early Italian stuff, which I would love to be able to use in real life.

Onebrokelady

Cherryfudge said:

@Onebrokelady, years ago someone drew my attention to a pretty, ferny plant growing where they fed the wild birds. Turns out the birdseed contained hemp, and the plant was a relative of cannab!s!

😂😂😂that's hilarious 

Cherryfudge

Rather an exhausting day today: church was online, then a tidy round and some cooking as A, H and grandchildren came for dinner. We had a really nice afternoon with them including a walk to the swings where a very friendly cat insisted on joining us.  DGD1 was interested, wanting to know what it was doing all the time. I suppose when you are two and don't have a cat at home, you don't necessarily understand if it wants to be stroked or why it thinks it's perfectly all right to lie down in the road (a very quiet cul de sac, I hasten to add).

They went about 4.30 and I went to sleep soon after! Well, dozed for a good while before a late tea and Pottery Throwdown. Now I'm wading through the paperwork for tomorrow's class.

milann

 Cherryfudge the children I worked with had quite severe special needs and it was very, very basic work. Basically repeating words on a tape and matching items to a word and basic greetings, the same session was repeated several times. They’d only stay in the lesson a short time and then we’d go and do various therapy programmes tailored to their individual needs. 

Cherryfudge

I survived giving a Maths lesson! I was up till about 2 last night trying to get my head round frequency tables, which I'd mastered the other week and wanted to be sure of. I then discovered they made no sense whatsoever after two weeks, but after pouring over the computer I realised I didn't need them. Great relief. Then when I got there this morning it turned out I did need them. Panic, but I asked the teacher to tell me every step I needed to make, and wrote them out. Then the person I was supporting and I got a side room to ourselves so we could work in peace and we slowly worked through the worksheets we'd been given. I was honest with her and explained I'd not done frequency at school so I was just learning it myself. Thankfully she seemed fine with that and by the end of the lesson I felt we'd both progressed. The teacher in charge very helpfully lent me some coloured overlays to try, as a flickering light had caused me processing problems last week. They helped a bit but didn't sort it out completely. However, the side room was well enough lit without all the overhead lighting so I was okay.

When I got home, DH had the afternoon off as the shop where he volunteers was shut. He'd made a chicken and gammon pie, which was very tasty, and the rest of the meats are in the freezer for another day.

I had an hour's sleep in the afternoon to make up for last night, then went to the cleaning job, which was three hours. Finally, I called at Mr T on the way home because I've been running out of snacky things to eat and resorting to biscuits and chocolate. The result is I've had a couple of egg custard tarts for a late tea, and got some discounted fish pie mix which is now in the freezer.

Tomorrow is our bargain day out by train: it was a regional offer of £1 a journey. A and H have already done trips to Newcastle and York on the same deal.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping £7.39

Cherryfudge

A quick update from a nice day out: all train journeys went to plan apart from the first train was a two-part one and we somehow got stranded in first class. The staff knew and were fine with us staying there! I even got an MSE-worthy free charge of my phone and Kindle (and read quite a bit of my library book).

Leeds wasn't too busy: I was still half asleep all morning but got a replacement eyebrow pencil that I needed and a lovely book for DGD2. We went to an Italian place for lunch then to the art gallery for a couple of hours, then for a coffee after which I decided to search TKM on the off-chance of replacing some shoes that got a bleach stain on them yesterday. No luck, but DH found himself a very smart coat and as his current smart coat has damaged lining and some staining, we felt it was a good opportunity to get another. So a very cheap day out cost a lot more than planned but DH doesn't buy clothes much.

The journey back was all to plan (trains never used to be like this!) and I even dived home for a few minutes before setting off to my friend's for our postponed pizza and pancake evening. I have eaten too much but perhaps I'll wear it off next week as we've planned a walk together.

Workwise, a short course has come up which they'll pay me to attend but I need to be on the ball as bookings haven't yet opened. And in other financial news, annoyingly my credit card has charged me £11 interest which I could have avoided but put off as they'd not texted me their usual warning.

Rough guestimate of today's expenditure:
Toiletries £3
Gift £6.99
Lunch £50
Afternoon coffee/tea £6
Clothing (DH) £99.99 (though via my credit card so I get points).
Random chocolate and savoury snacks because I felt peckish £2.50